CORONATION OF THE KING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22563, 6 May 1935, Page 2

CORONATION OF THE KING

The Coronation cannot be described, It is a thing impossible,' and too vast, too magnificent, too mystic, ajnd too solemn for written sentences. It cannot be done; and what lam about to relate here is merely. the impressionistic story of many pageants seen from a favourable corner in Westminster Abbey during seven of the most astonishing hours of my life; my eyes surfeited with historical colour and motion, and' my ears iated with music. I was physically exhausted with the long vigil, yet I knew it not, for my brain was ablaze with' pictures that it had recorded and my mind bewildered with the mediaeval splendour of the thing. I cannot ev,en now, after the event, piece together the cyclone of emotions that raged within me, for as I try I merely conjure up pageant after pageant, colour upon colour, one more wonderful than the \ other. I have seen many sights in my life. I have seen, kings erowned before, I have seen royal weddings and royal funerals and great processions without losing control over my perspective. So I entered Westminster Abbey at 7 o'clock in the morning, more with the air of doing my duty with eyes, ears, and pen, than seeing and hearing for my own personal interpretation. And I came out at 2in the afternoon—dazed with the glory of it. ... . . .."' At 7 in the morning, as I took up my place in the triforium directly over the thrones, and with a full view of the transepts, choir, arfd nave, the Abbey already glowed with animation and cojour: peers in their robes, carrying their ' coronets; peeresses, princesses, generals, admirals, bishops, knights of the various orders in great flowing mantles' on which'was embroidered the insignia of the order, each with different coloured robes and embroidery; " honourable gentlemen " of the King's Body Guard, Yeomen of the Guard, Lords-Lieutenant, Deputy-Lieutenants looking like Fieldmarshals of a century ago, Eoyal Ushers of Scotland, Privy Councillors in silver panniers and white silken knee breeches, Life Guards officers, provincial mayors with their gold chains of office round their necks —sonte of these chains as old as'the Abbey itself—dragoons, hussars, lancers, yeomanry, colonels, men in shakos, men in busbies, men in silver, gold, brass, and jet helmets, men with spears and men with halberds, -priests in red, in white, in gold, choir boys in surplices, all marshalled to their places by officers in regimental uniform or men in levee dress carrying red staves with golden*tops. There was no confusion. Every seat was numbered, every section had a gold staff usher to look after it. Even at that early hour the scene was wonderful. A great picture was being painted as if by a master hand. Here a dash of colour, there a red splash, there a purple, and here a white. Quickly the spaces were brushed in by the invisible hand, rapidly, almost feverishly,, until at last the framework was filled in and there lay before me a glowing, living picture such as perhaps the world has never seen before. By 8 o'clock the dim old Abbey looked - like a vast flower garden that had been arranged by a master gardener, an artist in formality and colour. The peeresses sat together in the south transept, a great square of living colour like a patch of lilies. Above them the Commons in all the uniforms of imagination, with their wives in white and cream and gold. On the other side the crimson-robed peers, showing underneath the gold and silver and white of their court clothing. Above them again the other half of the Commons in all the uniform that imagination can conjure up—levee dress, militia, territorial, regular army and navy, lieutenancy, ushers, King's Counsel, and ministerial. In the theatre itself, close by the thrones, a splash of purple and white made up of thirty or more bishops huddled closely together as is their wont; great men, these, superior to the civil authorities as from early days; ' some of them in golden copes. In the galleries above the choir, a great concourse of exalted people. The colours stunned the eye. Nothing .approached the amazing glory of the Indian princes. There was such a cyclone of colour that the eye grew wearied and sought rest along the pure white surplices of the great choir, who looked like a thousand angels in their eyrie.

Away down the long aisle the living garden stretched itself., I could look over and across the screen on which were perched the musicians. Westminster Abbey is a home of the great ' dead, a palace of tombs and monuments. Not one was visible, the dead great were hidden by the splendid living. . . . —MR EALPH DAVID BLUMBNFELD. From the Dally Express, London, reprinted In "Fleet Street: An Anthology ot Modern Journalism." Edited by W. W. Cobbett and Sidney Dark. London: Byre and Spottiswoode, Ltd.